1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an information processing apparatus capable of communicating with a printing apparatus and to a print setting method therefor.
2. Description of the Related Art
In performing print processing with a printer from a computer, it is generally performed to set various print settings including items such as a type of paper, the number of copies, and a layout, using a printer driver installed on the computer. Hereinafter, in the present exemplary embodiment, each of the items is referred to as a “setting item”. Further, a specific content of the setting item is hereinafter referred to as a “setting value”. For example, in the case of the setting item “paper type”, the setting value for the paper type can include plain paper or glossy paper. Furthermore, “print setting information”, in principle, refers to information describing a setting value for each of the setting items.
The print setting information in an initial state, in which a printer driver is installed on a computer, generally includes, as a preset, a setting combination that can be regarded general or a setting combination with which the printer can operate in a well-balanced operation state.
Here, the “print setting information in an initial state” refers to a print setting preset at the time of shipping of a printer. Hereinafter, the “print setting information in an initial state” is simply referred to as a “driver default”. In this regard, considering a case where a user desires to constantly apply a setting other than an initial setting, an operating system (OS) premised on a multi-user environment includes a function for storing one combination of desired settings for each user account as a normal setting. Hereinafter, in the present exemplary embodiment, print setting information set for each user account is simply referred to as a “user default”. Here, the “OS premised on a multi-user environment” includes Windows® 2000, Windows® XP, and Windows Vista® of the Microsoft Corporation.
In a general case of print processing, an application, with respect to current print setting information acquired from a printer driver, performs a change in the setting for an item that the application requires to set and generates a print job without performing a change in the setting items other than the required items.
Accordingly, it is useful to use the above-described function of an OS for storing items that an application does not change as default settings, which saves the time for changing a setting at every print processing and greatly improves the efficiency of a print operation.
Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2004-213132 discusses a method for distributing a printer driver having a desired initial setting to a plurality of computers on a network.
Furthermore, Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2000-185450 discusses a method for applying the same setting for a plurality of users by exporting default setting information of a user as a file and importing the file on a printer driver of another user.
Moreover, Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2003-157174 discusses a method for changing arbitrary settings via a setting user interface (UI) of a printer driver of a server and importing the settings to a printer driver of a client as a file. The above-described conventional methods may be useful in applying the same setting on a plurality of computers.
However, in “Introduction to Point and Print” in Windows Driver Kit (WDK) Documentation attached to Windows Driver Development Kit of the Microsoft Corporation, it is necessary to prepare a network environment described therein. Accordingly, in the case of a large-scale printing system, one printer may be connected to one computer regardless of a relationship between computers (for example, a print server and a client personal computer (PC)). In the case where it is desired to uniformly change the default settings, it is necessary to display a driver setting UI to perform a change for all terminals. This may degrade the operation efficiency.
In the method discussed in Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2004-213132, it is necessary to install a printer driver on a distribution destination computer to apply a setting. Accordingly, with this method, a setting cannot be changed with a simple and easy operation. In the methods discussed in Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2000-185450 and Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2003-157174, it is not necessary to reinstall a printer driver. Accordingly, a setting can be changed by an operation easier than that in the case of the method discussed in Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2004-213132. However, in the case of these two conventional methods, it is also necessary to perform a complicated operation. That is, in the methods discussed in Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2000-185450 and Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2003-157174, it is necessary to at least once display a setting UI of a printer driver (a setting export source), then change each setting item by a user manual operation of an input device, such as a mouse or a keyboard, and then press an OK button or an “apply settings” button to store the setting.
The above-described conventional methods have the following problems because the conventional methods export all setting items set by the printer driver as files. That is, in the case where versions of printer drivers differ from each other between the export source and the import destination and if the number of setting items differs between them, it is difficult to maintain compatibility between them.
Furthermore, in the above-described conventional methods, all settings are overwritten with the setting for the export source even in the case where items in the already-set print setting information, other than specific items desired to be changed, are desired not to be changed from the already-performed setting for each user (or each printing system). This may degrade user convenience.
In general, a printer driver includes a resetting method for restoring an initial state of the printer driver, considering a case where a user has changed any print setting by mistake. However, the content to be restored by the resetting method is that in the driver default setting. Accordingly, in this case, the following problems may arise.
That is, in the case where, after changing from a default setting to a desired setting by any of the above-described methods, the changed setting has been further changed and saved by mistake, the resetting method cannot be used to restore the desired setting. Furthermore, in any of the above-described conventional methods, a user cannot flexibly and arbitrarily select which of a driver default, a system default, and a user default is to be set as a default setting customization target.
That is, with the above-described conventional methods, a user cannot flexibly and freely change and set an effective scope of a default setting on a printer driver.